Professor Longhair was an important influence on Rebennack. Rebennack gained fame beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with music that combined New Orleans-style rhythm and blues with psychedelic rock and stage shows that bordered on voodoo religious ceremonies, including elaborate costumes and headdress. For a time he was billed as Doctor John, The Night Tripper. The name "Dr. John" came from a legendary Louisiana voodoo practitioner from the start of the 19th century.

Δευτέρα, 3 Μαρτίου 2008

Born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, she took the professional name Dusty Springfield after joining her brother’s band, the Springfields. A folk-oriented trio, they were Britain’s top-selling group in 1961 and enjoyed an American hit in 1962 ("Silver Threads and Golden Needles") 15 months before the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” ignited the British Invasion. Drawn to rhythm & blues, Dusty left the Springfields in 1963 to launch a solo career. What she achieved was nothing less than a reinvention of British soul music. Her approach had little to do with guitar-driven rock and roll. She gravitated toward Motown’s orchestrated pop-soul, albeit filtered through the cool, poised vocal approach that reflected her British background. Smitten by the soulful sounds coming out of Detroit, Springfield actually introduced the British public to Motown’s caravan of stars as the host of a 1965 TV special.

Springfield immediately connected as a solo artist with “I Only Want to Be With You” (1964), which made her the second British act after the Beatles to score a stateside pop hit. She became known as a British interpreter of American songwriters like Randy Newman, Jerry Ragavoy, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Several of her most memorable hits, including “Wishin’ and Hopin’” and “The Look of Love,” were written by the latter duo. Her biggest U.S. hit came in 1966 with the heavily orchestrated “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” an Italian song rewritten with English lyrics.

Springfield switched American labels from Phillips to Atlantic in 1968. The move yielded the masterful Dusty in Memphis, which played more to her R&B leanings than any previous album. The Atlantic Records production team of Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd matched the British vocalist with some of the South’s finest session musicians. Springfield tackled a wide range of material by some of her favorite songwriters, including four songs by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The album included such soulful tracks as “Son of a Preacher Man,” which returned Springfield to the Top Ten, and “Breakfast in Bed.” While the album only reached #99, it has grown in stature over the years and was reissued in a deluxe, expanded edition by Rhino in 1999.

In another adventurous move, Atlantic paired Springfield with the rising Philly-soul production-songwriting team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff on 1970’s A Brand New Me. Thereafter, the Seventies were generally quiet years for Springfield, who moved from London to Los Angeles and recorded only sporadically. Springfield made a comeback came in 1987 when Britain’s Pet Shop Boys enlisted her to sing on “What Have I Done to Deserve This,” a dance-floor favorite that reached #2 in the U.S. They also produced her 1990 album, Reputation. “Son of a Preacher Man” saw a revival of popularity with its inclusion on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Springfield’s last studio album, A Very Fine Love (1995), returned her to the folk and country genres where she’d begun 35 years earlier with the Springfields. A career-spanning three-CD retrospective, The Dusty Springfield Anthology, was released in 1997.

Springfield died of breast cancer-with which she’d first been diagnosed in 1994-on March 2, 1999, six weeks before her 60th birthday.

Παρασκευή, 29 Φεβρουαρίου 2008

Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus was a largely successful, and decently grossing, album released by the psychedelic rock ensemble Spirit. Produced by David Briggs, who is best known for his work with Neil Young, its 1970 publication, undertaken by record label Epic, came shortly before the original group disbanded.

This loosely-based, sci-fi concept album is a diverse yet cohesive effort, and long considered by fans, critics and musicians alike to be one of the finest albums ever recorded.[citation needed] The album's second song is the keynote track "Nature's Way", the most notable hit (along with "I've Got a Line on You") the band would ever produce. "Mr. Skin" also became a hit single in the U.S., three years after the album's release. The album also includes several other lesser-known tunes which are considered to have had an impact on the genre of experimental rock in the United States.

The album evidently had an influence on other groups -- the track "Morning Will Come" presaged the emerging glam rock trend and sounds strikingly similar to the music of Marc Bolan and T. Rex. The piano figure that opens the instrumental track "Space Child" so closely resembles the piano intro of the 1978 Steely Dan hit "FM" that it is almost certain that Steely Dan was making a musical reference to Spirit. A modern nod to Spirit was given by Sam Beam of lo-fi indie band Iron and Wine. The breakdown in "Wolves(Song of the Shepherd's Dog)" matches that in "Prelude-Nothing to Hide".

Just as in previous attempts, Spirit fused aspects of jazz and folk together with their traditional rock stylings, but unlike them, they introduced added elements of space rock, or popular music's science-fiction subset. This innovative LP is also notable as one of the first rock albums to use the newly-developed Moog synthesizer.

More than 20 years after its original 1970 release, the 1996 re-issue of Twelve Dreams by Sony brought the creation back to life. Remastered and featuring previously unreleased material, Sony's move rekindled an interest in the unorthodox and innovative band.

Rehearsing in Fyfe’s bedroom after school and when Andy has time off from the factory he works in, they put together their early material with Fyfe on drums and vocals and Andy on guitar and vocals. Easter/summer they go to a small studio on Belfast’s Lisburn Road and put down their first demo, including: Bloody Blue, Skyward, Body O.D. and Beefheart/Albini, with Andy filling in on bass duties.

Needing a bass player to complete the line up they recruit Fyfe’s school buddy Michael McKeegan on bass. Michael, an energetic and enthusiastic metal fan, is influenced by the same music as the boys but also adds to the party: Voivod, Carcass, Napalm Death, Black Sabbath and various Grindcore, Black, Speed and Doom Metal.

Τρίτη, 26 Φεβρουαρίου 2008

When the anesthesia wore off, Pat Martino looked up hazily at his parents and his doctors. and tried to piece together any memory of his life.One of the greatest guitarists in jazz. Martino had suffered a severe brain aneurysm and underwent surgery after being told that his condition could be terminal. After his operations he could remember almost nothing. He barely recognized his parents. and had no memory of his guitar or his career. He remembers feeling as if he had been "dropped cold, empty, neutral, cleansed...naked."

In the following months. Martino made a remarkable recovery. Through intensive study of his own historic recordings, and with the help of computer technology, Pat managed to reverse his memory loss and return to form on his instrument. His past recordings eventually became "an old friend, a spiritual experience which remained beautiful and honest." This recovery fits in perfectly with Pat's illustrious personal history. Since playing his first notes while still in his pre-teenage years, Martino has been recognized as one of the most exciting and virtuosic guitarists in jazz. With a distinctive, fat sound and gut-wrenching performances, he represents the best not just in jazz, but in music. He embodies thoughtful energy and soul.

Born Pat Azzara in Philadelphia in 1944, ha was first exposed to jazz through his father, Carmen "Mickey" Azzara, who sang in local clubs and briefly studied guitar with Eddie Lang. He took Pat to all the city's hot-spots to hear and meet Wes Montgomery and other musical giants. "I have always admired my father and have wanted to impress him. As a result, it forced me to get serious with my creative powers."

He began playing guitar when he was twelve years old. and left school in tenth grade to devote himself to music. During Visits to his music teacher Dennis Sandole, Pat often ran into another gifted student, John Coltrane, who would treat the youngster to hot chocolate as they talked about music.

Besides first-hand encounters with `Trane and Montgomery, whose album Grooveyard had "an enormous influence" on Martino, he also cites Johnny Smith, a Stan Getz associate, as an early inspiration. "He seemed to me, as a child. to understand everything about music," Pat recalls.

Martino became actively involved with the , early rock scene in Philadelphia, alongside stars like Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker and Bobby Darin. His first road gig was with jazz organist Charles Earland, a high school friend. His reputation soon spread among other jazz players, and he was recruited by bandleader Lloyd Price to play hits such as Stagger Lee on-stage with musicians like Slide Hampton and Red Holloway.

Martino moved to Harlem to immerse himself in the "soul jazz" played by Earland and others. Previously, he had "heard all of the white man's jazz. I never heard that other part of the culture," he remembers. The organ trio concept had a profound influence on Martino's rhythmic and harmonic approach. and he remained in the idiom as a sideman, gigging with Jack McDuff and Don Patterson. An icon before his eighteenth birthday, Pat was signed as a leader for Prestige Records when he was twenty. His seminal albums from this period include classics like Strings!, Desperado, El Hombre and Baiyina (The Clear Evidence), one of jazz's first successful ventures into psychedelia.

In 1976, Martino began experiencing the excruciating headaches which were eventually diagnosed as symptoms of his aneurysms. After his surgery and recovery, he resumed his career when he appeared in1987 in New York, a gig that was released on a CD with an appropriate name, The Return. He then took another hiatus when both of his parents became ill, and he didn't record again until 1994, when he recorded Interchange and then The Maker.

Today, Martino lives in Philadelphia again and continues to grow as a musician. As the New York Times recently noted, "Mr. Martino, at fifty, is back and he is plotting new musical directions, adding more layers to his myth." His experiments with guitar synthesizers, begun during his rehabilitation, are taking him in the direction of orchestral arrangements and they promise groundbreaking possibilities. Musicians flock to his door for lessons, and he offers not only the benefits of his musical knowledge, but also the philosophical insights of a man who has faced and overcome enormous obstacles. "The guitar is of no great importance to me," he muses. "The people it brings to me are what matter. They are what I'm extremely grateful for, because they are alive. The guitar is just an apparatus."